Brexiteers now hate the Brexit they used to love

Theresa May’s deal actually delivers everything many leading Eurosceptics once claimed they wanted

‘There is too little discussion,” said the MP, “on how we should engineer an orderly transition.” He added: “It took 40 years to progress to this stage of integration and we are not going to resolve all the issues in one stage.”

The MP in question, one Owen Paterson, was speaking in 2014, making him the first former Cabinet minister to advocate fully leaving the EU. An important factor in doing so successfully, he argued, was to leave gradually, following “a definitive plan” that would keep Britain inside the single market at least for a period, while ditching the EU’S project of political integration.

Now, though, Mr Paterson is one of the staunchest opponents of Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement and a firm advocate of no deal. His journey is one shared by many Eurosceptics. Ever since Maastricht, MPS like Sir Bernard Jenkin, Sir Bill Cash and Iain Duncan Smith have been pushing for reforms that would keep many of the EU’S economic elements without the political bits. All of them now oppose Mrs May’s deal.

Another example, from 2014: “The primary aim is clear – to get as close as possible to the trading alliance, the common market we all voted for in 1975… My preference would be that we should remain within the customs union.” This was David Davis.

In that speech, Mr Davis laid out a renegotiation wish list. The UK should aim to take full control of immigration and home affairs policy, social and employment law and financial regulation. Such reforms, he said, would pare back EU membership to the common market he supported.

What’s striking about this is that there is, in fact, a deal on the table that not only delivers these things, but which actually goes further. It’s called the Irish backstop and it is precisely the part of Mrs May’s deal that all of Parliament’s hard-line Brexiteers now say they most hate.

It is hard to keep track of what exactly these Brexiteers hate. One week, they suggest the backstop be reopened and edited. Another week, they want “legally binding assurances”, which could consist of a supplementary legal note interpreting the backstop as temporary. The next week, they want to chuck the whole damn thing.

If the Brexiteers are wondering why they have so spectacularly failed to take control of the negotiations over the last two years, this ought to give us a clue. The problem is not, as Donald Tusk claimed this week, that they had no plan. They were flush with plans – pamphlets, articles, speeches, journals.

There’s “Flexcit”, a 400-page blueprint for leaving the EU over a 20-year period. There’s “Change or Go”, a 1,000 page dossier laying out every option under the sun. As I set out last week, there might even be a feasible strategy for a no-deal – not that any Brexiteer has coherently argued it. The problem is that the Brexiteers have so many plans and they change so often that they can’t unite consistently behind any of them.

Until recently, what nearly all of these plans had in common was that they rejected no deal as too risky and involved leaving the EU over an extended period, passing through a stage that looks very like the backstop. The backstop, flawed though it is, delivers all of the following elements of Brexit: an end to EU budget payments, full control over immigration, total control over the services industries (including finance) that comprise 80 per cent of our economy, substantially increased control over all other industries, the right to reject any future EU employment, environmental or social legislation, control over farming and fisheries and an end to the jurisdiction of EU courts.

This is a faster, more ambitious Brexit than Mr Davis, Mr Paterson or their peers were advocating a few years ago. It’s much better than staying in the single market with no say. Yet they are screaming betrayal.

They do make some sound arguments about the backstop’s disadvantages. Taking up the regulatory freedoms it offers could trigger extra checks on goods crossing the Irish Sea into Northern Ireland. The principle is galling, but the practical effect is negligible. Such goods comprise less than 0.5 per cent of UK GDP.

Most annoyingly, the backstop keeps Britain inside the customs union (as Mr Davis formerly advocated). The truth, though, is that no international treaty can ultimately overrule a sovereign state and we are better off leaving when we are ready and led by a strong government.

As argued in 2000 by Bill Cash, the absence of an exit clause in a treaty cannot bind a sovereign state: “The right of secession must still lie with them,” he wrote back then. Indeed, had the UK not insisted on inserting Article 50 into the Lisbon Treaty, we would almost certainly have found an easier route to the exit.

Privately, many Brexiteers will tell you that they can see the advantages of the backstop. But they are being swept up in a tide of radicalism. They each have their eye on the throne, or a Cabinet seat at least, and no one wants to be the one arguing for compromise. Instead, they are each desperate to show the greatest purity of heart to drum up support from the base.

Yet this desire for a “pure” Brexit is exactly the strategy most likely to hand the initiative to Labour. This week, Jeremy Corbyn finally laid out his Brexit demands. They amount to something very like the single market/ Norway model that Mr Davis, Mr Paterson, Dan Hannan and many Eurosceptics once endorsed. But this plan inevitably requires a substantial delay and, if driven through with Labour votes, will come with dubious bells and whistles attached, like extra EU regulations and free movement. Why are Tories willing to risk letting Labour water down the deal?

There is no harm in pushing the Government to see how much it can get out of Brussels. Obtaining a legal clarification to the backstop would be a helpful way to mitigate its flaws and win over the DUP. So it’s reasonable for MPS to support amendments that stiffen the Government’s backbone.

But when it comes down to the final vote, Brexiteers are losing sight of the bigger picture. For decades, they have been gathering in back rooms to mull over blueprints, taking pride in their marginalisation, fiddling about with debating points and pamphlets. If the backstop had been authored by the Bruges Group, these Tories would be falling over themselves to endorse it. Instead, they seem determined to prove Mr Tusk right and, at the moment of victory, let the prize slip through their fingers.

They are swept up in a tide of radicalism. Each has their eye on the throne, and no one wants to argue for compromise